This is the first of two articles in which we describe how to acquire and build the source code for OpenSolaris. The first article provides all the necessary background information (terminology, where to get the tools, and so on) and describes a basic compilation and installation, and the second article will describe a more complicated compilation and installation.

There are a variety of options for examining boot failure, depending on how far you get.

The catch-all method is to boot with the kernel debugger by booting '-k' (edit the GRUB menu item appropriately). You can then break into the kernel debugger by pressing 'F1' and 'a' together (assuming your system isn't totally hosed). From there, '::ptree' and '::walk thread | ::findstack' are your friends.

If you are getting far enough, you can also boot with verbose SMF messages (-m verbose), or boot to the 'none' milestone (-m milestone=none) and then run 'svcadm milestone all' and examine what is happening from the sulogin prompt.

As usual, the opensolaris-help forum is the place to go with these questions:

When I originally saw the article, there was not an English translation. My bad for not checking, regardless it's still rather annoying to have to wade through lots of text I can't read. I don't like the "side-by-side" format. So as a matter of personal preference I prefer the one linked in the news article over the on you referred to, though I'm certain someone else might like it more.